As an increasing number of applications and services are being made available over networks such as the Internet, an increasing number of service providers are turning to technologies such as cloud computing. In general, cloud computing is an approach to providing access to remote resources through a network. Such resources may include hardware and/or software. Hardware resources may include computers (e.g., servers), mass storage devices, and other useful hardware elements. Software resources may include operating systems, databases, etc. Customers of the service provider can create and manage virtual machines using the service provider's resources and load customer-specific software applications on such virtual machines. The customer then may purchase use of the service provider's resources rather than subjecting itself to the demands of owning and operating hardware and software resources.
Operation of the virtual machines employed by a customer may be impaired for a variety of reasons. For example, faults in hardware or software underlying a virtual machine, faults in the customer's software running on a virtual machine, misconfiguration, or other factors may result in apparent impairment of virtual machine operation.